Thinking about life... on Labyrinth Gardens

Russell Layne

May 10, 2012 4:22 PM

Thinking about life... by Russell Layne

The sun was bright and hot, especially for this late in the season, as Russell began walking in the Gardens, not paying a lot of attention to his surroundings. He had been at Sonora long enough to know that the rumors about the kinds of things lurking out here were somewhere between fact and fiction, and also long enough to think he could deal with anything that did bother him, so the biggest risk involved in this was that of getting lost.

A maze; who had ever thought of a maze, he wondered? Sure, the building was huge, so finding the way back was just a matter – as far as he knew – of keeping on until one found it again at the worst of times, but still…a maze. Headmaster Clurican was supposed to have been the one with a sense of humor, while Headmaster Tribble was the one who tended to shield whatever it was he was writing in that painting of him in the foyer with his hand, but Russell couldn’t say which of them would come up with a maze. Clurican might think it was funny, but he thought it could just as easily reflect the way that Tribble’s mind worked. Of the two, based on their reputations, he was the one Russell more identified with, and Russell thought that the metaphor of a maze worked very well for looking at life. It was hard to ever see around the next corner to know if it was going to be a way out or a dead end, never mind see the whole picture. Divination promised to clear things up, maybe sometimes, but no one was teaching it at the moment, and he had his doubts about his skills in that area anyway.

Until recently, life, for him, had always been very simple. He knew the same people and he did the same things, and he did all this over and over again, with only small variations day to day. In a way, he still did that, but it all seemed to have gotten complicated all of a sudden, and he didn’t quite know why. One day, he’d just been going about his own business and the next thing he knew, he was being kissed by Topher’s half-sister. Now, they wrote, but…what was he supposed to do with all this? On one hand, he didn’t even know what they were doing, especially since it wasn’t supposed to have stuck once real life happened again, and on the other, he had someone he’d grown up with, his friend, who had other issues with her related to all this crazy stuff which had happened when they were infants. What was he supposed to do with that?

Then there were just things at Sonora. Maybe it was because of Caroline, he didn’t know, but he’d started to notice that all the girls here were, well, girls, too, and to wonder if he was just destined to have bad taste in that way; too many of them were pretty rich girls, of the sort which were pretty firmly out of his league. The dorm, too, was presenting new angles: Arnold was the Assistant Captain of the Quidditch team, Arthur was acting sort of weird even for him, and they had a new roommate, too, and he got the feeling that Preston, in particular, had a problem with the guy. Preston was either dating or planning to marry Sara Raines, too, though Russell was a little fuzzy about that; he’d considered seeking advice from that quarter, but had then recalled that it was Preston he’d be dealing with. That had many kinds of potential to not end well; Russell liked his roommates well enough at this point, but he didn’t delude himself that they weren’t a strange bunch. The question was just whether or not he was strange, too; that was another thing he found himself thinking about, if not as much as the rest of it.

And on the side of all of this, he still had classes, in which CATS were looming ever closer, and Quidditch, which he was prepared to bet was going to be a pretty intense season. Fun times.

There was nothing much he could do about any of it, but Russell thought about it a lot – about girls, and dorm politics, and strangeness, and worried about his grades and the potential for future badges and whether or not a Bludger to the head would clear a lot of things up for him very quickly in the pretty near future. And so, from time to time, he found it necessary to come and move around outside, just to clear his head out away from people.

So far, it had been working pretty well, except for the occasional incident of not being away from people that long. Today was such a time. He stopped as he saw someone ahead of him turn a corner that put them into the same path and smiled. “Good afternoon,” he said. “It’s a nice day for a walk, isn’t it?”

16 Russell Layne Thinking about life... 183 Russell Layne 1 5

Michael Grosvenor

May 25, 2012 3:57 PM

Thinking about lives by Michael Grosvenor

Michael enjoyed walking or sitting out in the Labyrinth Gardens at the best of times. He found them calming, and they were usually quiet enough to carry a conversation on with ease, unless one happened to stray too near a fountain – the rushing water could be quite distracting and mask certain speech sounds. As the term was drawing on though, and he began to think about going home, he was especially appreciative of the time and space to just be himself. Sonora pretty much let him do that. Ok, here he was still the kid with a hearing impairment. Except that here, it had never been too much of a big deal. And, if it was, at least it was the only thing that made him stand out. At home, he was the only wizard in a world full of Muggles. Not that any of them knew that of course but knew it, and – for all his family's curious questions and the stories he could tell them – he didn't have anyone to really talk to about it. He guessed it was a problem for most Muggleborns. The being different, the isolation was a problem but, by its very nature, there was no one to talk to about it, unless you could write to other Muggleborn friends. Home, overall, was a pretty insular experience. Michael had never had many friends in his own community before he'd moved away. Any ties he'd had were now well and truly lost. Plus there was the difficulty of explaining where he went all term, though most people had made up their own minds. His parents, if asked, had said that he was attending an out of state boarding school. If pressed for a reason, they had cited wanting to get a fresh start. However, most people had assumed he'd been sent to a special school for the deaf. This was made clear by the teasing of his old classmates if he had the misfortune to run into them. At home, he was the deaf kid, who went to special school, but also secretly the town's only wizard. Here, he was just Michael. If people knew his name. Sometimes, he was just that blond kid. And he liked it that way.

Rounding a corner, he found himself face to face with another student. Which was lucky, as the boy began speaking almost immediately.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “But then it almost always is here,” he added with a half smile.

He recognised the boy he'd run into as Russell Layne. He was a year above and a different house to Michael, but they had sometimes shared classes and it was a small school. However, that was pretty much the sum total of Michael's knowledge on the boy. He wondered briefly whether Russell had intended that as a comment in passing or whether he'd been trying to open up a conversation. Tone of voice was sometimes difficult for Michael to detect, although from various conversations, mostly with his sister, it wasn't always easy to read these things if you didn't have a hearing impairment.

“Were you headed somewhere in particular or just having a wander?” he asked, hoping that that would either clear things up (although he couldn't see how it would get a direct enough response) or also count as exchanging pleasantries until he figured out how into this conversation he was supposed to get.

13 Michael Grosvenor Thinking about lives 199 Michael Grosvenor 0 5